Plot It Yourself

Having detoured around the table with its load of paper, I stood at the end of Wolfe’s desk. Ranged before him were three of the items of the collection: the manuscripts of Alice Porter’s “There Is Only Love,” and Simon Jacobs’s “What’s Mine Is Yours,” and the copy of Jane Ogilvy’s “On Earth but Not in Heaven.” In his hand were some sheets from his scratch pad. His elbow was on the chair arm with his forearm perpendicular. It takes energy to hold a forearm straight up, and he only does it when he is especially pleased with himself.

“I’m looking,” I said. “What is it? Fingerprints?”

“Better than fingerprints. These three stories were all written by the same person.”

“Yeah? Not on the same typewriter. I compared them with a glass.”

“So did I.” He rattled the sheets. “Better than a typewriter. A typewriter can change hands.” He glanced at the top sheet. “In Alice Porter’s story a character avers something six times. In Simon Jacobs’s story, eight times. In Jane Ogilvy’s story, seven times. You know, of course, that nearly every writer of dialogue has his pet substitute, or substitutes, for ‘say.’ Wanting a variation for ‘he said’ or ‘she said,’ they have him declare, state, blurt, spout, cry, pronounce, avow, murmur, mutter, snap-there are dozens of them; and they tend to repeat the same one. Would you accept it as coincidence that this man and those two women have the same favourite, ‘aver’?”

“Maybe with salt. I heard you say once that it is not inconceivable that the fall in temperature when the sun moves south is merely a coincidence.”

“Pfui. That was conversation. This is work. There are other similarities, equally remarkable, in these stories. Two of them are verbal.” He looked at the second sheet. “Alice Porter has this: ‘Not for nothing would he abandon the only person he had ever loved.’ And this: ‘She might lose her self-respect, but not for nothing.’ Simon Jacobs has this. ‘And must he forfeit his honour too? Not for nothing?’ And this: ‘Not for nothing had she suffered tortures that no woman could be expected to survive.’ Jane Ogilvy has a man say in reply to a question, ‘Not for nothing, my dear, not for nothing.’ ”

I scratched my cheek. “Well. Not for nothing did you read the stories.”